Recent arts coverage:
- Evolutionary biology. Aesthetic determinism. Live action role playing. The Rude Mechs are making a new play again
- Suburban battlefield: Women fight invisible foe in Amie Siegel’s ‘Black Moon’
- In eerie paintings by Ana Fernandez, a house isn’t just a house
More arts coverage | Follow this blog on Twitter @artsinaustin | Read recent arts reviews
Austin360 blogs > Austin Arts: Seeing Things > Archives > 2011 > February > 23 > Entry
Review: ‘CLUTCH, New Music by UT Composers
Watching Clutch — a concert of new compositions from University of Texas Butler School of Music graduate students —on Monday night was like witnessing a conference for magicians, displaying their latest tricks.
The composers are expanding the available tools: bass clarinet, four saxophones, harp, pedals with electronic samples, buckshot on a bass drum.
Composer Steven Snowden is a rising star, and the drama that erupted from his latest percussion work isn’t about to slow his ascension.
Snowden enlisted Line Upon Line, Austin’s up and coming percussion trio, for his three-part work, “A Man With a Gun Lives Here.” The stage contained a chalkboard next to a giant bass drum, lit from below by a yellow floodlight.
As the trio surrounded the horizontal drum, Adam Bedell drew a “one-legged” triangle on the chalkboard. In the near-darkness an eerie mood came on. They traded rhythms, violently banging the drum skin and edge with sticks and the butt end of mallets, like some tribal campfire ceremony.
Or perhaps a fire kept by vagrants, as each movement’s chalkboard symbol carried a message from the system of “hobo signs.”
Snowden’s work recalled a more direct John Cage, while the call and response, to an extent, recalled STOMP. “Be Prepared to Defend Yourself,” the first movement, was aptly named. Rubber balls were dragged across the skin of the drum, reverberating like a warplane overhead.
The third movement introduced a paper bag.
The bag was passed around the drum until being dramatically stabbed with drum sticks, spilling buckshot over the drum. This gave the trio yet another avenue of sound, each bang now echoed with hundreds of jumping ball bearings, the sound of waves from each tilt of the drum.
Theatrics have repercussions though, as Snowden, at intermission, attempted, pitifully, to clear the stage of the metal balls using music stands.
There were plenty more highlights. Max Stoffregen’s “La Magie Noire” was a tidy violin duo with each player literally finish the other’s phrase through the entirety of the piece, alternating with delicate harmonics.
“Funk Off” by Andrew Davis was a clashing history of funk and contemporary art music, with four saxophones.
Like magic, there’s an ephemeral quality to new music. It’s here, then gone. But it’s a chance to go big with your best ideas, and if some of the dissonant, fragmented works don’t translate for the audience, the next new trick is coming up.
Luke Quinton is an American-Statesman freelance arts critic.
Comments
When commenting, we ask that you keep things civil and abide by our Visitor Agreement. To report comment abuse, click here.